It comes around every year. The tricks. The treats. The ghouls. The goblins. The princesses. It just won't stop! The horror! The horror! Oct. 31 has returned like a chill wind, and many other bits of spookery have returned for your popcorny video marathons.

Return of Audrey

Who thought a plant could have legs? When B-movie maestro Roger Corman took two days to shoot "Little Shop of Horrors" in 1960, nobody guessed it would be turned into a hit off-Broadway musical, then a hit film directed by Frank Oz in 1986 and then spruced up again for Broadway. This month, the 1986 movie arrives on Blu-ray in two versions: the theatrical release and a carefully restored "director's cut."

It's not any old director's cut in which a few minutes have been added for DVD. This very different 20-minute ending was changed after poor test screenings. It became more conventional, if that's the word for a story about a plant that eats people. Black-and-white footage of this ending was included as a DVD bonus in 1998, but now it's fully restored and in your face.

Return of Hammer

England's Hammer Studios, master of horror movies, made a 1980 anthology series with all kinds of British actors (including Peter Cushing, Brian Cox and Pierce Brosnan) meeting all manner of witches, ghosts, werewolves, cannibals and miscellaneous mayhem.

U.S. cable broadcasts snipped out the nuder and bloodier bits and dropped one segment entirely. All 13 uncut episodes have been spruced up for "The Complete Hammer House of Horror," a collection of poison bonbons for fans of terror most English. The worst are painless, the best are shivery.

The Man of a Thousand Faces liked twisting his body into painful positions for eerie, disturbing roles. Kino's new Blu-ray of "The Penalty" - restored, tinted and newly scored - has Chaney legless (more or less) and plotting awful revenge against the doctor who amputated his lower extremities. He meets the man's daughter and poses for her statue of Satan, the better to bide his time.

This Chaney festival throws in a look at his double-amputee costume and makeup kit, surviving footage of a lost film, two trailers for other movies and a short 1914 Western with one of his earliest film roles.

Return of everything

Horror and fantasy are enjoying a new renaissance of original and classy-looking low-budget productions that usually play a few festivals and then go directly to DVD. Here are new releases that shouldn't be overlooked.

"The Revenant": Writer/director Kerry Prior apparently couldn't stop coming up with ideas on where to take this concept, so it keeps surprising the viewer. A soldier killed in Iraq emerges from his grave in Los Angeles. Now a blood-drinking zombie, he hooks up with his buddy to become media-star vigilantes. It's a dark comedy with bite.

"Juan of the Dead": Another zombie comedy mixed with political satire. Its hero is a thief who's survived everything Cuba could throw at him, and the zombie apocalypse (apparently spreading from Guantanamo) is just one more crisis to be handled with rowdy, bumbling resolve.

"Penumbra": In almost real time, a not-altogether-pleasant woman tries to lease her Buenos Aires apartment to a strange group of tenants who are plotting something sinister for the impending eclipse. Very original suspense, with a disturbing ending that asks more questions than it answers.

"Flying Swords of Dragon Gate":Tsui Hark, mighty director of martial-arts fantasies, tosses an all-action salad with Jet Li, an evil eunuch, a swordswoman and a pregnant concubine converging in the middle of a sandstorm. Choose the English-dubbed version, forget the plot and look at the pretty pictures. Also in a 3-D Blu-ray if you really want flying swords to put your eye out.